★ Kirkus Reviews, starred review
★ Publishers Weekly, starred review
★ Shelf Awareness, starred review
★ The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, starred review

Life is how you look at it. And for Black photographer Roy DeCarava, life in his neighborhood was beautiful. Follow Roy through 1940s Harlem, as he takes out his camera, pops in a roll of film, and opens his eyes to the beauty all around him. There's a little boy drawing on the sidewalk with chalk. SNAP! A young man at the bus stop with a baby in his arms. SNAP! Kids playing in an open fire hydrant. SNAP! Looking at them all, Roy sees beauty everywhere in Harlem, and so do the people who look at his photos.

This deeply researched picture book also includes additional information on DeCarava, a list of places to view his photos, a bibliography, and photos.

★ Kirkus Reviews, starred review
★ Publishers Weekly, starred review

In December of 1862, Walt Whitman left Brooklyn, New York, for the war-torn South after seeing his brother's name on a list of wounded Union soldiers. What he found on the battlefields completely changed his life, as he came face to face with not only the wounded, but the dying. Whitman spent the next three years working part-time in Washington, DC, visiting and ministering to soldiers in the city's many military hospitals. Caring for the sick and dying was not easy, but Whitman was committed to his chosen service. He became known as the soldiers' friend, and was bound--in his own way--to save and heal the America he wrote about and loved so deeply.

New York Times-bestselling author Gary Golio and Caldecott Honor artist E. B. Lewis bring Whitman's story and his passion for America to life, complete with quotes from Whitman's works, and extensive backmatter, which includes a bibliography and photographs.

Jimi Hendrix was many things: a superstar, a rebel, a hero, an innovator. But first, he was a boy named Jimmy who loved to draw and paint and listen to records. A boy who played air guitar with a broomstick and longed for a real guitar of his own. A boy who asked himself a question: Could someone paint pictures with sound?
This a story of a talented child who learns to see, hear, and interpret the world around him in his own unique way. It is also a story of a determined kid with a vision, who worked hard to become a devoted and masterful artist. Jimi Hendrix--a groundbreaking performer whose music shook the very foundations of rock 'n' roll.

Willie Johnson was born in 1897, and from the beginning he loved to sing--and play his cigar box guitar. But his childhood was interrupted when he lost his mother and his sight. How does a blind boy make his way in the world? Fortunately for Willie, the music saved him and brought him back into the light. His powerful voice, combined with the wailing of his slide guitar, moved people. Willie made a name for himself performing on street corners all over Texas. And one day he hit it big when he got a record deal and his songs were played on the radio. Then in 1977, his song--Dark Was the Night--was chosen to light up the darkness when it was launched into space on the Voyager I space probe's famous Golden Record. His immortal song was selected for the way it expresses the loneliness humans all feel, while reminding us we're not alone.

The audience was completely silent the first time Billie Holiday performed a song called Strange Fruit. In the 1930s, Billie was known as a performer of jazz and blues music, but this song wasn't either of those things. It was a song about injustice, and it would change her life forever.

Discover how two outsiders--Billie Holiday, a young black woman raised in poverty, and Abel Meeropol, the son of Jewish immigrants--combined their talents to create a song that challenged racism and paved the way for the Civil Rights movement.

Once there was a little slip of a boy who roamed the streets of London, hungry for life (and maybe a bit of bread). His dad long gone and his actress mother ailing, five-year-old Charlie found himself onstage one day taking his mum's place, singing and drawing laughs amid a shower of coins. There were times in the poorhouse and times spent sitting in the window at home with Mum, making up funny stories about passersby. And when Charlie described a wobbly old man he saw in baggy clothes, with turned-out feet and a crooked cane, his mother found it sad, but Charlie knew that funny and sad go hand in hand. With a lyrical text and exquisite collage imagery, Gary Golio and Ed Young interpret Charlie Chaplin's path from his childhood through his beginnings in silent film and the creation of his iconic Little Tramp. Keen-eyed readers will notice a silhouette of the Little Tramp throughout the book that becomes animated with a flip of the pages. An afterword fills in facts about the beloved performer who became one of the most famous entertainers of all time.

Hey hey, Woody Guthrie, I wrote you a song...

When Bob finished, Woody's face lit up like the sun.

Bob Dylan is a musical icon, an American legend, and, quite simply, a poet. But before he became Bob Dylan, he was Bob Zimmerman, a kid from rural Minnesota.

This lyrical and gorgeously illustrated picture book biography follows Bob as he renames himself after his favorite poet, Dylan Thomas, and leaves his mining town to pursue his love of music in New York City. There, he meets his folk music hero and future mentor, Woody Guthrie, changing his life forever.

When sax player Charlie Bird Parker and trumpeter John Dizzy Gillespie make music together, they toss notes back and forth like a game of tag and chase each other with sounds. As Dizzy's cheeks puff out like a frog with glasses, the two friends beep and bop and push each other to create a new kind of music--a thrilling fast jazz full of surprises. Blending a playful, rhythmic narration with expressive illustrations as fluid and dynamic as their subjects, this tribute to the masters of bebop by acclaimed biographer Gary Golio and beloved artist Ed Young will have readers hankering to listen for themselves.